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In Which We Raise a Pint to the Ol' LHBS

2/23/2022

Howdy all!

First on up we've got a brand-spankin'-new beer release that's available in cans and (in very limited quantity) on draft right now and that beer is TLA! This here's a west-coast-style IPA with a New England hopping schedule and in this particular case that yielded us the dankest dang beer we've ever brewed and we daresay it's doggone delicious! Come drink some!

We're calling it now: this is the year west coast IPA comes back in a big way

And speaking of tasty beers that you should drink, we've got a cask this week! Thassright, on Thursday we're tappin' up a mighty special cask of brown ale that we're callin' Relax, Don't Worry! And the reason that this particular cask is so extra special is that it's being poured as a tribute to Modern Homebrew Emporium* (the homebrew shop in Somerville) which closed for good earlier this month. We may not especially "tuned in" to the "homebrewing community," but we (like most brewers out there) got our collective start by brewing batches in the kitchen and we certainly set foot in MHE a time or two over the years (including but not limited to a number of times when we had to rush out and get some critical ingredient or another that we'd forgotten to order from our main suppliers). Anyway the point is that we're having some Emotions about this lil' shop closing, so we figured we'd raise a pint (or forty) to it over the course of the weekend and we invite you to join us!

Pictured: a homebrew batch of El Pulpo, circa early 2013

And if you're lookin' for something fun to do while you toast to bygone days, you should probably come to trivia! This Thursday we've got Matt back in the house and this time the theme is cult movies! We don't know much beyond the theme because Matt is either mysterious or unprepared, but we *do* know it'll be fun so come on out!

No guarantees any of these movies will come up during trivia, I just picked the first six movies that popped into my head

And after that we're movin' right on along into the weekend with HotChix slingin' tasty-ass hot chicken sandwiches on Friday and The Nada Cart bringin' in a buncha emps on Saturday and then Chef Harold is back for his regularly-scheduled sushi class on Sunday and the point is that we've got a weekend fulla treats!

Wish I had a sassy caption to put here, but now I'm just hungry

And movin' on to the far-flung future days of next week, we've got more trivia! Yes indeedy, next Thursday is the return of Audio Triviality and this time around the theme is Zombies!

We're not really sure how that theme fits in with heavy metal music so we're gonna assume a nontrivial number of questions will involve Rob Zombie, White Zombie, and possibly Eddie but more to the point: it'll be fun and you should come!

And then after that we've got the long-awaited return of Kafka Day! Next Friday and Saturday (March 4th-5th) we'll be tappin' up a buncha special and/or barrel-aged and/or wild beers and we may have a new beer or two (well, definitely one, maybe two) and we've got some rad food vendors comin' to hang out and I'm pretty sure we've still got some slots open for our Private Tastings if you wanna hang with Liz and Jared while you drink fancy beer and it's gonna be a good time!

We keep saying, "this year is the last year we hold our existential terror themed beer festival," and every year we are wrong

And then "hot on the heels" of ol' Kafka Day is Mass Beer week! Long story short, the Mass Brewers Guild decided to hop on the ol' "made-up holiday" train and now there's a whole week celebrating Massachusetts breweries! We'll be hosting events pretty much every day throughout the week (including a special non-Thursday trivia night) and we've got a special flight focusing on Mass-grown ingredients and we'll be serving in and/or selling the Official Mass Beer Week Glassware and also we'll be doin' all that stuff we normally do, so it should be a good time!

Check out the list of events here: Fun Things

* The folks at MHE have been - in our experience, anyway - big fans of cask and supporters of NERAX, so we figured a cask was a pretty fitting sendoff.

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In Which There Are Beers and Burgers

2/16/2022

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Hello again! We're back again with our regular roundup of good times and good tastes, so let's get to it!

First on up we've got a bit of a "change of cast" on the ol' funky line and that means crowd-favorite Critters XV has been replaced by the creatively-named Critters XVI! But this is more than just a number change - Critters XVI primarily features guava and wildflower honey as its main accoutrements (with a smattering of other fruits thrown in for good measure) and it's a bit less shy about bringin' the funk than its predecessor and anyway the point is that it's dang good and it's on tap and in bottles right now and you should come try some!

Your humble editor suggests pairing this funky lil' beast with our guava and cream cheese empanadas 10/10 would gorge

And should you be lookin' for something to do whilst you sip them funky suds, we might humbly suggest that you join us for Strange and Bizarre Facts Trivia on Thursday! The title pretty much says it all, which means we're in for a pretty wild ride and it's gonna be fun and you should come hang out!

We are looking forward to finding out what Matt considers "strange and bizarre"

And speaking of hanging out, it behooves us to mention that we're takin' over the taps at A&B Burgers up in Beverly! Starting today, they're gonna be tapping four of our beers (specifically Extra Naked, Shut Up Kelly, Pizza Time, and Awkward Conversation) and pairing flights of those beers with a flight of sliders specially created* to pair with our beers! How cool is that? Anyway, the menu is below (and it looks tasty as hell tbh) and it's running through the rest of the month and you should check it out!

Extra Naked Table Beer
Burger patty with tzatziki sauce, cucumber, romaine

Shut Up Kelly! Porter
Blackened burger patty with blue cheese crumbles, blue cheese dressing, bacon

Pizza Time Hazy IPA
Burger patty with burrata, charred tomato, pepperoni

Awkward Conversation Cranberry Orange Grisette
Burger patty with charred pineapple, whipped feta and caramelized onion

BURGS

And moving back to things that are in our own taproom thankyouverymuch, we've got our long-awaited Beer and Girl Scout Cookie Pairings on Friday! We tasted through a whole buncha cookies and even more beers and we've got the perfect pairings for all your Girl Scout Cookie faves so you can come and drink beer and eat cookies (and there will be some Girl Scouts onsite to provide you with any to-go cookies you need) and it's gonna be a hoot and you should come hang out!

We'll be doing it again March 11-12, but the beer menu will be at least somewhat different by then, which means you should probably just come eat cookies with us twice!

And if you're more of a savory fan, we've got new-to-us Plat du Jour servin' up charcuterie on Saturday and that's gonna be tasty too, so come on out!

Also it hardly even bears mentioning at this point since it's pretty much a regular occurrence, but in case you ain't heard about all the sushi classes we're hosting: we're hosting sushi classes (led by the delightful Chef Harold) pretty much every Wednesday and Sunday for the foreseeable future and they're fun as hell!

And movin' a bit farther into the future, next Thursday - in addition to the return of our biweekly cask - we'll be hosting Cult Classic Movie trivia! Our host pretty pointedly didn't say which cult classics, possibly in effort to cultivate an air of mystery, but there ain't no mystery about whether or not it'll be fun (it will), so come on out!

Fun times!

* They asked us for pairing suggestions and Jared, true to form, sent them a needlessly-long rambling screed full of nonsense. But since they're pros, they came up with some really tasty-sounding burgers, so we'll call that a win.

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We Ate, We Drank, We Conquered

2/9/2022

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Howdy-do, friendaroos! We've got a fully-stocked goodie bag fulla beer and treats and fun times, so let's get to it!

And we're starting things out this week on a bit of a bittersweet note, as this week we're bidding farewell to Justin, who's been one of our brewers for a couple years. It's a bummer to see him go - he was instrumental in developing what is now our base recipe for hazy IPAs, and he tied the record for "most times a person has accidentally gotten beer on the ceiling," but he's headed for warmer climes* and we wish him well in his new digs!

Truly a man who contains multitudes.

And on a related note, we're hiring! Yes indeedy, we're looking for some folks (definitely one, maybe two) to help out in production (which is to say, brewing and/or brewing-related activities), so if that sounds like your bag then click on over to our jobs page** to learn more!

You want job? We have job!

Moving right along past the here and now for a quick minute, we've got some fun news about something that's a bit of a ways in the future: we'll be at the Decibel Magazine Beer & Metal Fest in Philly this June! It's a ways away and also in a different state, but we're stoked as hell about it and it just got announced and it's gonna be a ton of fun! And as (somewhat tentative) icing on that ol' cake, we're (most likely) gonna be doing a collab beer with one of the bands! Maybe two! Somehow! Anyway we'll keep y'all posted on that bit once we have "actual details" but we wanted to get word out in case any of y'all wanted to come hang out!

Tickets here!

And moving back to the here and/or now, while still talking about beers and/or bands, we've got a cask this week! Thassright, this Thursday we'll be tappin' up a cask of Unchained, our collab with the band Attest. And while we love this beer just the way it is (and it seems that y'all do too, considering we're close to out of it), we figured we'd do what we always do*** and mix things up a bit with some new dry hops! This time around we used a new-to-us experimental hop variety with the totally-not-forgettable name of HBC 472 and we're stoked to see what this hop is all about, so come find out with us!

Don't worry, we won't also be quietly sobbing in the corner after hearing the news NERAX is canceled for the third year in a row

And speaking of Thursday, don't forget that we've got Simpsons Trivia this Thursday! The theme this time is "season two" and we (your humble bloggists, who perpetually lose trivia under the moniker "the management") are gonna hang out and drink cask and maybe heckle Chris a little bit and it's gonna be fun and you should come!

You can come compete for... this thing

While we're on the topic of things that are good, later this week (probably Friday) we're rereleasing an old favorite (of ours) in cans: Mild Child! This tasty little brown ale is a surefire smooth sipper that's just designed to accompany you for a good old fashioned session, but you ain't gotta take our word for it - come grab some!

A very well-manned beer

And since we're talking about new beers and/or old favorites, we're gonna take a brief detour to Future Times so's we can ramble a bit about Kafka Day! This lil' holiday may get a smidge overlooked because it's "weird" and "confusing" and "pointless" and also it wasn't started with the intention of being an annual thing - we originally just wanted to drink a bunch of fancy beer after enduring a mini-dystopia for a substantial amount of time.

I mean, who doesn't

But! That "mini-dystopia" has broadened its scope a bit (though the current state of things is probably not the fault of the Everett building department) and really the point is that we wanted another excuse to drink a bunch of fancy and/or wild and/or barrel-aged beer and so that's just what we're gonna do!

So. Starting in the afternoon on Friday March 4th we're gonna bust out the ol' portable draft system and tap a buncha cool beer and we've got some rad food vendors in the house and we (Liz and Jared) are gonna be doing some Private Tastings of a buncha those cool beers (two in-person and one virtual - tickets here!) and we're gonna have a grand ol' time, so mark your calendars and come celebrate with us!

Pictured: celebration

And speaking of rad food vendors, this weekend we've got Matilda's back in the house on Friday and The 'Nada Cart is gonna be stoppin' by on Saturday and we've got our usual Sunday sushi class goin' on (we've got sushi classes every Sunday and Wednesday for the foreseeable future, as a matter of fact) and anyway that's a tonna tasty treats!

Despite all our speculation surrounding 2022, no one predicted a sushi chef residency in the side taproom, but here we are

And looking a bit farther into the future, we've got another one-off trivia next Thursday and that's Strange and Bizarre Facts!

This is new to us, so we're not totally sure what to expect, but also we know it'll be fun!

And, lastly, speaking of fun and/or tasty times, next Friday (the 18th) is our first beer and Girl Scout Cookie pairing night! We tasted through a whole mess o' cookies (our tasting panel averaged twelve cookies per person) and a buncha beer (as in, flights of the entire menu) and came up with the perfect pairings for everything and while we might not recommend that you eat so many cookies and drink so much beer that you feel weird for several days, we do recommend that you enjoy the fruits of our labor, so come get your munch on!

We ate, we drank, we conquered

* And if you think "moving to Florida with no notice or preparation" is unusual, then you probably don't know Justin.
** Eagle-eyed readers may notice that we've abandoned our longtime job description, wherein we make the job sound worse than it actually is to try and dissuade people who think that brewing is "fun." Long story short, enough people got loudly grumpy about it that we saw cause to rethink some of the wording.
*** Except for all those times when we don't do this.

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In Which We Raise a Pint to the Ol' LHBS

In Which There Are Beers and Burgers

We Ate, We Drank, We Conquered

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